What I Learned From Earl

The other day the Witty Redhead (the one with freckles) wrote a nice little essay outlining the importance of personal goals and of taking advantage of opportunity. With her permission I would like to expand on her thoughts a little. Actually, it is without her permission...whatever.


While it is important to have goals, I figure that folks somehow need to develop the desire for goaling. While it makes sense to seize opportunity as it floats by, you gotta' be able to recognize that opportunity when it is staring in your face. In other words I'm gonna' suggest a foundation needed to do these things. Sort of a Going Back to the Roots thing.

It has to do with my father who passed away many years ago. He spent his career in municipal management. And he was one of those motivator guys. In his large staff meetings he would always stress that everyone needed to figure out what it is they wanted to accomplish and nudge things so that their lives would start leaning in that direction. He would follow up on that with meeting with his people on the jobsite and discuss those practical issues that were holding them back and work with them to get through it. Always practical and never preachy. His employees would always go the extra mile for him. He believed that unless his employees were successful and pleased with themselves, they would never be successful on the job.

I guess when I was around thirteen he gave me a record to play. Record? You know, an old fashioned audio data device. This record contained a verbal essay by a gent named Earl Nightingale who was a successful motivation guru of the time. I don't remember most of what he said -- but one thing stuck with me and has served me in good stead. What I remember is when Earl talked about gardening.

Now I am going to talk to you. Not the collective You -- not the thousands, hundreds, four people people that read this blog -- but You. The individual You.

Let's imagine you decided to plant a little garden -- just to see if you could actually make something grow. You dig up and weed a little plot of ground. Very tenderly you plant a kernel of corn. Then a foot or so away you plant a seed of Nightshade. Now Nightshade is deadly poisonous to humans and I don't know why you are planting this because I can't see into your brain and I am concerned about you and -- oh never mind.

Proud of your deed you gently add fertilizer and water it. Every day you visit your garden and pull weeds out and lovingly water it. After a while, guess what happens?

The picture of the left is your corn stalk, the result of you time and effort. The one on the right is Nightshade, also the result of your time and effort. Actually, the Nightshade is kinda' pretty.

That's the story. See ya' later and have a good day.

Huh? No -- it's not a stupid story. There is deep meaning here. Consider:

The soil is like your mind -- fertile and vibrant and ready to accept whatever you plant. If you plant a kernel of corn, a good and productive and healthy idea -- and water it and tend to it with supportive and kind and warm thoughts -- it will produce a wonderful plant. You idea will flourish. When you plant Nightshade -- feed it with thoughts of doubt and fear and nourish it with a fertilizer of hate and distrust, it too will produce a magnificent plant. Your mind will produce in abundance whatever you plant. The mind simply doesn't care. What you sow you shall reap.

Now when I listened to this Earl Nightingale story as a youngster I wasn't too impressed. But as years passed I begin to discover that if I began to doubt myself it was so easy to add fertilizer to that doubt, justifying the truth of it and I would become fearful and timid in my actions. How could I establish goals or take advantage of opportunity when my life was governed by a perception of my own inability? But then I would look around and see calm and confident people and I could actually see them feeding their corn plant by the way they would latch onto nifty ideas and thoughts and would calmly reject weeds in their garden -- stuff that would pull them away. More and more I thought about the garden thing and it donned on me that I am truly the gardener and I could plant whatever I liked. It took me a while to figure out that I can grow corn, and I am pleased with the result.

I guess it boils down to: "You are what you think about -- all day long."  Riches? I'm not so sure about that. Success? Well, I figure the odds increase pretty dramatically if you are happy with yourself and you have a pretty good idea where you are going and you learn how to make your family life rewarding because that feeds your garden and when you walk into a room people are pleased to see you because you see them as major assets to your life and instead of waking up each morning fearful and dreading the day, you wake up pleased and looking forward to what you can accomplish......well, I would consider that pretty successful.

I quickly learned that fear, paranoia, sadness, and hate will explode within you and make you someone that I don't want to be around. I just don't want to wake up each morning afraid. I want to wake up more than that -- hopeful, excited and grateful.  

That's what I learned from Earl from that 33 rpm record way back in the 1950's. It's something to consider.